


Alternate Endings

by CrabOfDoom



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, Impalement, Minor Character Death, Veer from Canon, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 14:57:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11853948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrabOfDoom/pseuds/CrabOfDoom
Summary: One different choice, a few seconds' time bought, and an entirely new world in the morning.





	Alternate Endings

**Author's Note:**

> Written for ffxvweek's Day 7 prompt of "alternate endings", on tumblr. I've had the idea of a similar AU for a while, and this seemed like a good chance to give it a go.

Before she was even conscious of her actions, Sylva was moving. Every beat of her heart, as it raced in terror, every second that ticked by, felt hours apart, and surely, all of that time dragging was being lost, and she would never reach her injured son in time. Fire was already blossoming out of the mechanical nightmare of a soldier's arm. All she could do was throw herself in front of it, to shield her eldest child.

Without hesitation, Sylva Nox Fleuret closed her eyes, and did just that.

More seconds passed. These, both an eternity and an instant, and stopped all together by a thud that shook the very earth beneath her.

Sylva opened her eyes to the glimmer of pale blue hexagonal cells of magic. A barrier spell. A shield. Not two inches from the space between the bottom of her ribs, the rough and blackened tip of an enormous sword's blade connected with the barrier's surface. It sent sparks of magic spilling across the ethereal domed surface, but it never touched her. Nor had the flames, even as the grass and moss outside of the circle where she and Ravus knelt was charred to ash.

The monstrous soldier protected in armor that Sylva recognized from her fore-bearers' tales of war and horrors drew his sword back to strike at the barrier again. Another sword, wielded by a man clad in no armor but a well-tailored suit, sparked against the blackened blade to knock it off course and draw its owner's attention away. The barrier had been cast by King Regis, and would quickly fade as his focus turned to his own battle, and offered but a few seconds of protection from the flames and weapons of Tenebrae's invaders.

But those seconds were all the time Sylva needed. All the time in the world.

The Oracle of Eos drew on her own magic, without the immediate fear for her son's life, and cast her own barrier of protection out of Shiva's impenetrable ice. Towering, razor-sharp shards of the ice burst forth from the ground and out from the falls of the Fenestala River, and cut down all in their path. The mechanical men sent by Niflheim's emperor were knocked and shredded into the bits and scraps they'd been created from. Her own royal guards used the deadly icicles' speed to increase their own momentum and land the blows of their spears all the harder.

A few dozen feet away, Sylva heard the unmistakable sound of her young daughter's scream. More of the glorified tin soldiers rushed in on where Lunafreya had stopped in the clearing with Regis' small son.

In her element, Sylva was  _not_  going to be caught off of her guard again.

Spires of ice pierced up through the ground around the children and scraped against one another to form a crude but seamless fortress around Lunafreya and Noctis. Rows of thinner, sharper spikes jutted up outside of the shelter like petals of a rose. From within the instant castle, the children saw only the blurred bursts of light as the robotic soldiers sparked and exploded from being impaled.

Through the clearer facets of her own shield, Sylva could see the accursed airship transport that had brought Niflheim's attempt to rain death down upon its strongest adversaries. Well, Sylva was going to show them just how strong two thousand years of Nox Fleuret blood could be.

The queen leaned back to her right, as though to reach for the ground, and balled her hand into a white-knuckled fist. Sylva threw the metaphysical punch toward the airship with all her strength. In the same instant, the ground beside her shield rumbled, and a veritable lightning bolt of ice raced through the air and straight through the airship's magitek engines. The resulting explosion knocked all still fighting from their feet, and cracked long gaps into the queen's frozen barrier.

Through such a crack, her son could see the daemonic General Glauca, still at a personal war with the king of Lucis. And Regis, it appeared, was weakening. The young man's naked terror at facing his own death from the magitek trooper's flames turned cold, into raw anger. His home, his mother, his sister--his entire world could have been destroyed in an instant.

Regis' magic landed a blow against Glauca that slammed the General against a massive tree. Ravus held his right palm out, to the very point of the impact.

 _"GET OUT OF MY FOREST,"_  the prince screamed in rage. A streak of ice, and another, and another, needles compared to the spires summoned by his mother but no less sharp and lethal, all ripped through the air and found their mark.

The first shattered against Glauca's armor from a bad angle. The second pierced his left lung. The third, hit the unlikely bull's eye of the divot where his clavicle joined, right at the base of his throat. Ravus' rage, if not his skill and power, was a match for his mother's, in that the ice pinning Glauca's body to the ancient tree would take weeks to melt completely.

The Tenebraean soldiers that still stood systematically checked that every magitek soldier was destroyed. Reinforcements arrived from Fenestala Manor, alerted by the airship's explosion, and blew past the royal families and into the woods, in search of any outliers or ambushes. A small group stayed with the queen and king, banding together with their own injured, and at last assessed an all-clear.

At the word of a moment's safety, Sylva's magic dropped with her anger, as relief washed over her. Every icicle of her creation reverted to the river and ground water it had been formed from, and all at once, splashed to the scorched earth of the meadow. Their queen weakened by her exertions, the guards brought her daughter and Regis' son to her. Both were soaked and cold from the melted ice, still frightened, but unharmed.

Ravus watched them as though from somewhere just outside of himself. His mother and sister were alive and safe. And... he'd actually helped to ensure that? He wasn't a mere presence in the background, a secondary consideration after a ruler and a Chosen child? No. He wasn't. Ravus wasn't the spare, taking up resources and killing time until the real heiress came along. Not today. He was genuinely a Nox Fleuret, with a power granted by Shiva that he'd never before known he possessed, let alone that he could wield. And _successfully_.

It was a young power, certainly. Wild. Untrained. Smaller. Dappled sunlight through trees, on the meadow's grass, compared to his mother's searing beams of light that tore though the heavens. And yet, it had still been enough to drive out a monster born of the darkness. Ravus' eyes drifted over to the distant, gigantic tree; to where the body of his mother's would-be murderer still hung, thirty feet above the ground; to the narrow spears of ice that pinned Glauca there, and the mist that rose from them in the cool spring morning although they were still far too cold to drip.

The coldness of the Glacian's touch still ran through Ravus' veins. A coldness that held no pain nor emotion, but more the sensation of a clean brook's music, clearing a mind of too many thoughts. It was a welcomed effect. The boy who had returned fallen hatchlings to their nests, who brought nuts and dried fruits to the animals that didn't hibernate through the winter, who gushed  _for days_  about the brown fox that had taken a piece of bread from his hand, was now a young man who had taken a life. No matter how necessary--dare he even say deserved?--his actions were, it was not a fact that Ravus was prepared to process just yet.

Through the low, drifting steam and smoke that covered the sodden, fire-ravaged clearing, Regis made his way to where Sylva held his small son tightly. The Lucian king was visibly pained, and limping on his knee that bore a brace, but he lived. Noctis was safe and secure enough in the moment, and so Regis stopped beside his ally's son, first. His firm hand held warmly to Ravus' right shoulder.

"What you've done today," Regis told him, "is far more than you could know, Your Highness."

"For better?" Ravus asked, "or for worse, Majesty? I-I killed him."

"And he would have readily killed you," Regis pointed out, "along with your family. Glauca has killed so many in Iedolas' name, without hesitation nor a moment's regret. His was a legacy of blood and terror, and it's you who've ended it, Ravus; you, who has today avenged every life he's taken, as well as eliminated Niflheim's most feared warrior. If Glauca can fall, other nations will take heart and find hope that so can the rest. The Empire is not invincible, and it means so much to people to  _see_  that."

"I was... only... protecting my home..."

"That's all anyone could have asked of you," Regis said. "Killing does not make a boy a man, Ravus, but risking all to protect others does make a young man a hero."

\---------------

"I've been proud of you, since the day you were born, my dear," Sylva said, as she brushed back a broad tress of her son's hair, gone a wintry gray from the drain of his magical outburst. "As First Son of Tenebrae, yours has not been a clear nor simple path, yet you've handled yourself with grace, and met your duties with courage. And still, I have never been more proud of you, than I am today, Ravus."

"For however much I may have protected Tenebrae," Sylva told him, "it was you who saved Lucis, by saving its king."

"But..." Ravus stammered, "Regis would have held his own, wouldn't he? He'd-he'd have won? ...Wouldn't he?"

"We'll never have to know," Sylva said. "because  _you_  ended that danger. All of Insomnia will be lauding your name, as a hero."

"Mother, I'm _not_ ," Ravus insisted. His eyes held a sheen of tears that weren't yet ready to fall; he seemed fearful of accepting praise and valor that he didn't feel belonged to him. "I didn't do it for Regis or Noctis. I did it for Tenebrae. I didn't even know that I  _could_  do it."

Sylva nodded in understanding, and softly patted his shoulder.

"It's wise to be conscious of your motives, Ravus," she agreed. "The wrong reasons can taint even the most noble actions. But, my dear, you needn't fear that your actions today are spoiled because you were afraid of what would happen to the people and things that you love. That's still an act of love, even if to you, it feels selfish. You saved a king's life, Ravus. You bested an enemy of legendary and terrible power. And you did it, with no thought to your own glory. You have every reason to hold your head high."

"It just doesn't feel right," Ravus sighed. "I was only able to kill Glauca, because  _you_  saved  _me_."

"That is what we do, for the ones we love and value," Sylva smiled. "I was prepared to die, to save my son from that trooper's flames. And it was Regis' barrier spell that saved us both. If it will ease your mind, my dear, your defeat of Glauca repaid our life debt to Regis. You are even and equal with a king. I will tell Regis that you do not wish any public accolades, but I will insist that Insomnia and Eos be told that you are  _worthy_  of your birthright."

Ravus closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around his mother's shoulders. Strange, that she was so much smaller now that she'd been to him just two years before. Stranger still, that the unbending force of nature that had defended Tenebrae so ruthlessly, could fit into a vessel so petite.

"Is there anything you wish, Ravus?" Sylva asked, after allowing him to be still for a moment.

"I kind of want to be alone for a while," Ravus admitted, "but... I'm not ready to let you or Luna out of my sight, just yet."

"I'll have quilts and pillows taken to the library, my dear," she offered. "It's spacious enough that you can have your room to breathe, somewhere soft to sleep, but we can be close for one another, for the night. Tonight, shall we be inseparable as a family. Tomorrow, shall we be brave and try to reclaim our normality."

\---------------


End file.
